Can you eat oysters on slow carb?

I had a great question the other day on my email, from reader Alan W. He asked “Can you eat oysters? I like raw oysters with lemon, fresh
grated horse radish”. So, I thought I’d share my reply, just in case you’re thinking about hitting a dozen natural sometime this week.

Oysters are an interesting one.

They are rich in protein and have lots of other good nutrients. Here’s a breakdown of the nutrition for a dozen natural oysters:

Calories 114

Calories from Fat 38

Total Fat 4.2g

Saturated Fat 1.2g

Polyunsaturated Fat 1.6g

Monounsaturated Fat 0.6g

Cholesterol 90mg

Sodium 354mg

Total Carbohydrates 6.6g

Protein 11.8g

So you can see that in total, there’s 4.2g fat, which isn’t a bad thing, there’s almost 12g protein and there’s 6.6g carbohydrates.

That makes them well balanced, but not ideal for any component of the slow carb meal template. If you are looking at them for protein, they’re a bit low to replace a meat (normally you’d want 15-25g protein from the meat), and they have carbohydrate which meat doesn’t, which can contribute to more insulin in your bloodstream.

So, in summary, having them once in a while probably won’t set your fat loss back too much, but it’d be hard to incorporate them as a staple.

Do you have a specific food question? Ask me below, or send me an email using the ‘Contact’ item in the menu at the top of the page!